divali is known to hindus as the festival of lights (not to be confused, of course, with the jewish festival of lights, खानुका.) it celebrates the triumphant return of the indian hero prince rama (pron. "rahm" but with an ethnically-rolled r; real ones know) as told in the ramayana. whenever i think about the ramayana these days i think about a very funny joke told by indian-american comedian hari kondabolu on the topic of the ramayana and relations between north and south indians. the joke goes like this:
For those of you who don't know the story of Ramayana, let me give you my version of it. Basically, two North Indian brothers travel down south, and they meet two types of beings:
- monkey men, and
- dark-skinned demons with big stomachs and mustaches...so my uncles basically.
Aaaand that's what they think of us!
my mother is from the north and my father is from the south. to be clear, they get along perfectly fine and i've never had cause to feel that gap as a source of tension in my personal life. but as an observation of social dynamics i do find this joke extremely funny. most interpretations of hindu myths i've read are actually fairly colorist, & given all the demons do resemble my (paternal) uncles it becomes a bit harder to read them as anything other than..."propaganda" isn't the right word but whatever you'd call the thoughtless version of that.
on the other hand: as both jewish and hindu cultures have recognized, it is fun to light candles and eat fried food. my family's switched to electric diyas which is probably for the best, but i do miss the wax lamps of my childbood. the pakoras are still good tho
is that the other day on a discord call someone joked that calling some video game characters "demons" was a microaggression and i got to immediately come back with "i'm actually half-demon on my dad's side so i can reclaim it"
